Migration guide

This guide covers the differences between AR Foundation 2.x and 3.x.

AR Pose Driver

There is a new component: ARPoseDriver. This component was added to provide similar functionality to the TrackedPoseDriver and remove the dependency on the com.unity.xr.legacyinputhelpers package for AR Foundation. You can now use either the ARPoseDriver or the TrackedPoseDriver to drive a GameObject's local position and orientation according to the device's tracking information. Having both the ARPoseDriver and the TrackedPoseDriver components enabled on the same GameObject is not recommended as the behaviour is undefined.

Image tracking

The image tracking manager ARTrackedImageManager has a referenceLibrary property on it to set the reference image library (the set of images to detect in the environment). Previously, this was an XRReferenceImageLibrary. Now, it is an IReferenceImageLibrary, and XRReferenceImageLibrary implements IReferenceImageLibrary. If your code previously set the the referenceLibrary property to an XRReferenceImageLibrary, it should continue to work as before. However, if you previously treated the referenceLibrary as an XRReferenceImageLibrary, you have to attempt to cast it to a XRReferenceImageLibrary.

In the Editor, this is always an XRReferenceImageLibrary. However, at runtime with image tracking enabled, ARTrackedImageManager.referenceLibrary returns a new type, RuntimeReferenceImageLibrary. This still behaves like an XRReferenceImageLibrary (for instance, you can enumerate its reference images), and it might also have additional functionality (see MutableRuntimeReferenceImageLibrary).

Background shaders

The ARCameraBackground has been updated to support the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) when that package is present. This involved a breaking change to the XRCameraSubsystem: the property shaderName is now cameraMaterial. Most developers didn't need to access this directly because the shader name was only used by AR Foundation to construct the background material. That functionality has now moved to the XRCameraSubsystem.

Point clouds

The ARPointCloud properties positions, confidenceValues, and identifiers have changed from returning NativeArrays. The ARPointCloud manages the memory contained in these NativeArrays, so callers should only be able to see a NativeSlice (that is, you should not be able to Dispose of the NativeArray).

Additionally, these arrays aren't necessarily present. Previously, you could check for their existence with NativeArray<T>.IsCreated. NativeSlice doesn't have an IsCreated property, so these properties have been made nullable.

Face tracking

The ARFaceManager's supported property has been removed. If face tracking is not supported, the manager's subsystem is null. This was done for consistency as no other manager has this property. If a manager's subsystem is null after enabling the manager, that generally means the subsystem is not supported.

Reference Points renamed to Anchors

To align with industry standard terminology, "Reference Points" are now named "Anchors":

Old class	New class
ARReferencePointManager	ARAnchorManager
ARReferencePoint	ARAnchor

When you open an existing Project that used the old reference point API, Unity prompts you with the option to automatically update your scripts to the new API.